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View Poll Results: Which of these would do the most good for the world?

Re: What is the biggest problem facing humanity?

Many of the poll-response options about needing to produce more make the complementary implication that we need to procreate less.

Balancing production against needs is historic from the beginning as the foundational challenge all societies face.

Deciding whether the solution is to ramp up production, decrease population, or both is not an easy decision to make.

If the decision is to ramp up production, that can have the affect of increasing procreation as well.

If the decision is to decrease population, and the chosen method is to not ramp up production, or even reduce it, that may have an impact on reducing population, but can sometimes be judged as cruel, and, considering the power of the sex drive and the current asymptotic growth of our planet's population even in the face of gross abject poverty and obscene starvation, is less effective than one might imagine.

In the next 38 years it is forecast that we will add to the planet the equivalent of the combined population of China and India.

Considering that many, many regions of the planet currently reflect horrifically overcrowded population densities far beyond what any of us would voluntarily choose to live in ourselves, and that these intollerable population densities are caused by natural planetary limitations on practical availability of sufficient natural resources prerequisite to create and manage sustainable habitats necessary for survival ..

.. I can't help but choose the need to decrease population as the most reasonable choice in the matter.

The best most humane way of decreasing the population, at this point in the problem, is to spread the truth of the urgent need to reduce population across the planet, with massive campaigns to create smaller families communicated daily on multiple media, and make safe and effective pharmaceutical birth control available to everyone at nearly next to nothing in cost.

Re: What is the biggest problem facing humanity?

Originally Posted by Ontologuy

If the decision is to ramp up production, that can have the affect of increasing procreation as well.

I disagree. Some of the lowest birth rates in the world occur in wealthy societies which have everything they need in terms of material wealth. And the highest birth rates typically occur in societies in abject poverty.

Are you coming to bed?I can't. This is important.What?Someone is WRONG on the internet! -XKCD

Re: What is the biggest problem facing humanity?

Originally Posted by Kandahar

I disagree. Some of the lowest birth rates in the world occur in wealthy societies which have everything they need in terms of material wealth. And the highest birth rates typically occur in societies in abject poverty.

Indeed, this is true.

Those living in wealthy enclaves have a tendency to be more mentally oriented and abstractly intelligent, proclivities prerequisite for achieving and maintaining such wealth for the enjoyment such provides, and the desire for children is from a more concrete motivation, not to mention that children tend to interfere with the wealthy enjoying the great freedom their wealth provides, and that these people can easily afford birth control, some even participating in alternative sexual lifestyles outside the home.

And yes, considering there's not a whole heck of a lot for the abjectly impoverished to do on a Saturday evening, "let's have sex" is their default alternative to the latest movie or the hottest band .. and, of course, unprotected sex is all they can afford.

For the most part, however, and in general, the more you feed a population, the more it will grow.

Re: What is the biggest problem facing humanity?

The notion that stability and peace would help the most to me, is bad. It's what all the dicators and ruling tyranical single party government say. Yeah, yeah, we're corrupt, we stifle all individual freedom, but hey, we bring peace and stability! Trying to "fix" peace or stability seems a lot like trying to treat symptoms rather than the underlying illness.

I would prefer a culture of freedom. Economic, political, along with sufficient education to allow a majority of people to understand that freedom, and act on it.

Re: What is the biggest problem facing humanity?

Peace and stability was the obvious choice. Following that, you could work to bringing the other choices into reality. Can't get a quality education if there's a war waging a few miles away.

"We have more responsibility than power, I think. The newspaper can create great controversies, stir up arguments within the community or discussion, can throw light on injustices....just as it can do the opposite. It can hide things and be a great power for evil." -- Rupert Murdoch, 1968

Re: What is the biggest problem facing humanity?

If I were to throw all the major problems into one big basket, I'd say that the biggest problem is the normalization/acceptance of violence as an appropriate means of resolving conflict.

People are starving...NOT because they won't or can't work, but because they are forced to live under systems in which most of the worth and application of what they produce is stolen from them, and then (due to purchase-based access) we end up with people who work full time (more hours than they would as hunter-gatherers), and yet still end up in poverty.

People are ignorant...NOT because the won't or can't learn, but because elite interests who benefit from people having a grossly distorted impression of of the world maintain such a system.

People are sick, and dying in huge numbers to preventable disease...NOT because we lack the resources or knowledge to prevent or cure such illness, but because the coercive economic system places private profit above need, and so wherever the two collide (which is often), profit tends to prevail at the expense of life.

and so on...

The key challenge with the acceptance of violence is that there is a massive double-standard involved...street-level violence is widely condemned or recognized as unethical...but SYSTEMIC violence is given largely a free pass or (in the case of military actions) even lionized.

I've moved on to a better forum (scienceforums.net). Facts matter, and I don't have the time or energy for putting up with the pretense that they don't. PM me if you'd like me to get in touch with you when I'm done developing my own forum system, likely towards the end of 2013.